Kanye West Confounds Viewers With Fiery BBMAs Performance

Kanye West gave the final performance at the Billboard Music Awards on Sunday (May 17), and his set was quite a spectacle —though perhaps not for the reasons he intended.

The rapper-producer performed "All Day" from his upcoming Swish album, and then transitioned into the popular "Black Skinhead" from his previous studio release, Yeezus. While Kanye's efforts may have dazzled celebrities in the MGM Grand Garden Arena, viewers watching at home struggled to see the rapper (and the song's featured guests Theophilus London and Allan Kingdom) through a thick wall of pyrotechnic flare. The dropped-out audio had people adjusting their TV sets, too.

Rolling Stone reports that while Kanye's performance was 5 minutes and 18 seconds long, those watching at home only heard 4 minutes and 16 seconds of his mini-medley. Billboard evidently had no idea they'd need to censor the lyrics so heavily, as TMZ claims a production source at the awards show told them Mr. West didn't rehearse the song in dress rehearsal: "He's Kanye. What are we supposed to do?"

Kanye hasn't commented on the technical difficulties as of yet, but people on Twitter and Instagram certainly have. While we have currently have no idea whether the inferno was an intentional artistic choice (we must presume that rapping all of the swear-words certainly was), our feed has been full of reaction memes depicting the flashy blaze. Allow us to share a few of our favorites.

A classic 'Airplane' reference:

The ol' "This Is Fine":

Spongebob was also popular:

Hellfire edition:

STILL too soon, guys:

And finally, an excellent roundup via The Shade Room:

You can watch Kanye's performance of "All Day" and "Black Skinhead" above.